The Black Madonna (34 page)

ALL GONE TO LOOK FOR AMERICA

Riding the Iron Horse Across a Continent (and Back)

PETER MILLAR

‘Wi
tty yet observant’
Time Out

As the Bush era comes to a close there is unprecedented interest in an America on the cusp of change.

At the age of 52, with a shoestring budget, a backpack and an open mind, Peter Millar set about rediscovering the US, by following the last traces of the technological wonder that created the country in the first place: the railroad. On a rail network ravaged and reduced he managed to cross the continent two and a half times, talking to people, taking in their stories and their concerns, shaking stereotypes and challenging preconceptions, while watching the vast American landscape that most visitors fly over unfold in slow motion. In the tradition of Bill Bryson and Paul Theroux, wry, witty, intelligent and always observant, this ‘inland empire’ should appeal to modern Britons keen to get beneath the skin of the country that more than any other influence their lives, and to intelligent Americans open to an oblique look at their own country. And, of course, railway lovers everywhere.

‘Witty yet observant … this book smells of train travel and will appeal to wanderlusts as well as armchair train buffs’
Time Out

‘Succeeds in capturing the wonder of America that the iron horse made accessible to the world’
The Times

‘Fills a hole for those who love trains, microbrewery beer and the promise of big skies and wide open spaces’
Daily Telegraph

Paperback

£8.99

9781906413637

1989 THE BERLIN WALL

My Part in Its Downfall

PETER MILLAR

‘Irreverent and engaging’
Economist

It was an event that changed history, bringing the Cold War to a sudden, unexpected end and seeing the collapse not just of Communism but of the Soviet Union itself. Stereotypes disappeared overnight, and the maps of a continent had to be redrawn. Peter Millar was in the middle of it, literally: caught in Checkpoint Charlie between bemused East German border guards and drunk western revellers prematurely celebrating the end of an era.

For over a decade Millar had been living not just in East Berlin but also Warsaw and Moscow. In this engaging, garrulous, bibulous memoir we follow him on a journey into the heart of Cold War Europe. From the hitchhiking trip that helped him discover a secret path into a career in journalism, through the carousing bars of Fleet Street in the seventies, to the East Berlin corner pub with its eclectic cast of customers who taught him the truth about living on the wrong side of the Wall. We relive the night it all disintegrated, gain insight into the domino effect that swept through Eastern Europe in its aftermath and find out how the author felt as he opened his Stasi files and discovered which of his friends had – or hadn’t – been spying on him.

‘The
most entertaining read is
The Berlin Wall: My Part in Its Downfall
, a witty, wry, elegiac account of Millar’s time as a Reuters and
Sunday Times
correspondent in Berlin throughout most of the 1980s’
Spectator

‘The
best is [this] irreverent and engaging account. Fastidious readers who expect reporters to be a mere lens on events will be shocked at the amount of personal detail, including sexual antics and drinking habits of his colleagues in what now seems a Juvenalian age of dissolute British journalism. The author has a knack for befriending interesting people and tracking down important ones. He weaves their words with his clear-eyed reporting of events into a compelling narrative about the end of the cruel but bungling East German regime’
Economist
 

‘Part autobiography, part history primer and part Fleet Street gossip column, Millar cast aside the old chestnuts and set about reporting on the reality of life under communism … Energetic and passionate’
Sunday Times

Paperback

£11.99

9781906413477

PETER MILLAR
is a British journalist, critic and author, named Foreign Correspondent of the Year 1989 for his reporting of the later days of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall for
The Sunday Times. He is the author of All Gone to Look for America, 1989 The Berlin Wall: My Part in Its Downfall
, and the translator of several German-language books into English including the
best-selling
White Masai
by Corinne Hofmann, and
Deal With the Devil
by Martin Suter.